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Luis Alberto Urrea, 2005 Pulitzer
Prize finalist for nonfiction and member of the Latino Literature
Hall of Fame, is a prolific and acclaimed writer who uses his dual-culture
life experiences to explore greater themes of love, loss and triumph.
Born in Tijuana, Mexico to a Mexican father and an American mother,
Urrea has published extensively in all the major genres and is currently
published by Little, Brown and Company. The critically acclaimed author
of 11 books, Urrea is an award-winning poet and essayist. The Devil's
Highway, his 2004 non-fiction account of a group of Mexican immigrants
lost in the Arizona desert, won the 2004 Lannan Literary Award and
was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the Pacific Rim Kiriyama
Prize. A national best-seller, The Devil's Highway was also named
a best book of the year by the Los Angeles Times, the Miami Herald,
the Chicago Tribune, the Kansas City Star and many other publications.
Urrea's first book, Across the Wire, was named a New York Times Notable
Book and won the Christopher Award. Urrea also won a 1999 American
Book Award for his memoir, Nobody's Son: Notes from an American Life
and in 2000, he was voted into the Latino Literature Hall of Fame
following the publication of Vatos. His book of short stories, Six
Kinds of Sky, was named the 2002 small-press Book of the Year in fiction
by the editors of ForeWord magazine. He has also won a Western States
Book Award in poetry for The Fever of Being and was in The 1996 Best
American Poetry collection.
Urrea's most recent book, The Hummingbird's Daughter, is the culmination
of 20 years of research and writing. The historical novel tells the
story of Teresa Urrea, sometimes known as The Saint of Cabora and
the Mexican Joan of Arc.
Urrea attended the University of California at San Diego, earning
an undergraduate degree in writing, and did his graduate studies at
the University of Colorado-Boulder.
After serving as a relief worker in Tijuana and a film extra and columnist-editor-cartoonist
for several publications, Urrea moved to Boston where he taught expository
writing and fiction workshops at Harvard. He has also taught at Massachusetts
Bay Community College and the University of Colorado and he was the
writer in residence at the University of Louisiana-Lafayette.
Urrea's other titles include By the Lake of Sleeping Children, In
Search of Snow, Ghost Sickness and Wandering Time. His writing has
won an American Book Award, a Western
States Book Award, a Colorado Center for the Book Award and a Christopher
Award. The Devil's Highway has been optioned for a film by CDI Producciones.
Urrea lives with his family in Naperville, IL, where he is a professor
of creative writing at the University of Illinois-Chicago.
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